Early human farmers had SEX with primitive hunter gatherers – and had babies together, scientists find

Our amorous ancestors were thought to have split into two communities, but it turns out the two sides got very close to each other

By Jasper Hamill

25th May 2017, 5:00 pm

Updated: 26th May 2017, 7:47 am

ANCIENT early human farmers had sex with members of comparably primitive hunter-gatherer communities, new DNA evidence has revealed.

The transition from hunting and gathering to farming is one of the most significant milestones in human history.

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The skeleton shows the remains of an ancient human

Hunter-gatherers and farmers are usually thought about as two entirely different sets of people.

But findings from new ancient DNA evidence, published in the journal Current Biology, show that in modern Romania, the two very different communities were living side by side, intermixing with each other, and having children.

Researcher Doctor Michael Hofreiter, of Potsdam University in Germany, said: "We expected some level of mixing between farmers and hunter-gatherers, given the archaeological evidence for contact among these communities.

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The drawing is a facial reconstruction of an ancient human involved in the study

"However, we were fascinated by the high levels of integration between the two communities as reconstructed from our ancient DNA data."

The researchers say their findings add evidence to a longstanding debate about how a process called "Neolithic transition" which saw people gave up hunting and gathering for farming actually occurred.

The question has often been about whether the movement of people or the movement of ideas drove the transition.

Earlier evidence suggested that the Neolithic transition in Western Europe occurred mostly through the movement of people, whereas cultural diffusion played a larger role to the east, in Latvia and Ukraine.

The researchers behind the new study were interested in Romania because it lies between the two areas, presenting some of the most compelling archaeological evidence for contact between incoming farmers and local hunter-gatherers.

Their findings show that the relationship between hunter-gatherers and farmers in the Danube basin can be subtle and complex.

The researchers recovered four ancient human genomes from Romania dating back between 8,800 and 5,400 years ago.

They also analysed two Mesolithic (hunter-gatherer) genomes from Spain to provide further context.

The DNA revealed that the ancient Romanian genomes had "significant" ancestry from Western hunter-gatherers.

However, they also had a lesser but still sizeable contribution from Anatolian farmers, suggesting "multiple" sexual encounters between hunter-gatherers and farmers.

An analysis of the bones also showed they ate a varied diet, with a combination of land and sea sources.

Dr Hofreiter said:"Our study shows that such contacts between hunter-gatherers and farmers went beyond the exchange of food and artefacts.

"As data from different regions accumulate, we see a gradient across Europe, with increasing mixing of hunter-gatherers and farmers as we go east and north.

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"Whilst we still do not know the drivers of this gradient, we can speculate that, as farmers encountered more challenging climatic conditions, they started interacting more with local hunter-gatherers.

"These increased contacts, which are also evident in the archaeological record, led to genetic mixing, implying a high level of integration between very different people."

He pointed out that it's often said that farmers moved in and outcompeted hunter-gatherers with little interaction between the two.

But Dr Hofreiter says the truth is "surely" much richer and more varied.

He added: "In some places, as the new evidence shows, incoming farmers and local hunter-gatherers interacted and mixed to a great extent.

"They lived together, despite large cultural differences."

He said the next big step is to understand the reasons for why the interactions between the different people led to such varied outcomes.

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